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I have a new piece up at Foreign Affairs on Europe’s changing approach to China and what it means for the US. Some key points below, plus some additional background links
With US-China competition increasingly about economics and technology, the Europeans (and the EU itself) are now far more important to US China policy - a top tier actor now (where they are at best a second tier actor on hard security issues in Asia) 1/12
In some areas - trade, connectivity finance - this is because US leverage in these areas vis-a-vis China is strengthened by working with the world’s largest trading bloc, source of outbound investment, development aid etc. 2/12
In other areas - investment screening, telecoms - US economic and security objectives risk being actively undermined if the two sides are not joined up, whether that be Chinese tech acquisitions or 5G 3/12
EU is undergoing a “revolution” in its approach to China - an increasing sense that asymmetric openness can’t continue and that there needs to be a comprehensive overhaul of policy instruments, going far beyond China policy institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/europe… 4/12
Standard objection 1 - Europe is too commercially motivated to toughen up on China; yet this shift has been heavily driven by the European business community as risks to European competitiveness in high-value sectors became clearer english.bdi.eu/article/news/s… 5/12
Standard objection 2 - Europe is too divided to have a coherent China policy; there are discrete areas where this remains true but many others where the EU has already been able to harden policy even in the face of Chinese lobbying 6/12 
More importantly though, the battle lines over the new European China-driven agenda- industrial policy, data, procurement, antitrust etc. - do not map on to a scale of “China-friendliness”; the issues at stake are far broader piie.com/publications/p… / ec.europa.eu/epsc/sites/eps… 7/12
Transatlantic cooperation on China right now is circumscribed for various obvious reasons - Trump, overall political climate, 232, threat of auto-tariffs, mistrust on the specifics of e.g. Huawei csis.org/analysis/issue… 8/12
But transatlantic cooperation on China is also moving ahead on more fronts than are generally realized under the Trump administration - trade, investment screening, connectivity, political influence, Indo-Pac security and others 9/12
US starting to place China as a priority on the transatlantic agenda in a way that it never did before - during major bilats, at NATO, inter-agency delegations in Europe - including with countries where previous contact was minimal 10/12
But as the 5G case has demonstrated, there will be a bigger change of habits needed. US system is not geared up to deal with Europe on China as it does with Asian allies; has long been an afterthought and it still shows 11/12
Longer-term, the question is whether there can be a China-driven revisiting of the transatlantic agenda writ large; less about “China policy”, more about a wider issue set comparable to the current EU rethink 12/12
